Word games come a dime a dozen on Android, and thus, it takes a decent game to make headway. Gotta tell you, with the elements Word Puttz brings to the table, it might just have more than a passing flirtation with success.

At first blush, it reads like one’s run-of-the mill crossword puzzle, except for the limited area. But the first glance is deceptive, and leaves one wondering how word search, scrabble and putt-putt (yes, people, the mini-golf game) get added to the mix.

The game uses spoon-fed tutorials to highlight the game play at pertinent points. The playing area is made up of squared grid, with a golf-style cup at one end. The most prominent element is the word search; using the tray of seven letters that are replenished as they are used, words have to be constructed using a placed start letter, with the end goal being using crossword strategies to create a word that crosses over the aforementioned cup. No diagonal constructions are allowed; one has to go down or across.

To add to the challenge, words created score points, and each letter tile has assigned points that resemble Scrabble scoring; for example, a worth with a “J” in it is of high premium. The Scrabble element introduces the possibility of using strategy, as general rules of that game are observed, like the creation of combo words. it is also possible to “dance” around the cup while trying to earn more points, as points control the assignation of level measuring stars Ã la Angry Birds. There is a tile exchanger, “hintz” and reversal button, and real cash can be used to stock up on some of the boosts, including wildcard “octo-balls.”

As the game progresses through the higher levels, more challenges are thrown at the player: optional gold coins that can be crossed over for bonus points, point thresholds to open the cup, the need to spell backwards and even a race to the cup versus the game UI. Just when one suspects the gameplay might get a bit too monotonous, the developer adds in some flair.

While the game is an all-rounder of sorts, I did wish the challenge level rose faster. An optional means of shutting down ads apart from real cash might have been nice, even if it was hard to do.

Still, this is a fun free-to-play game, and one that I spent a bit too long “trying” out.

Yushino is a ‘word’ game like Scrabble that uses base–10 numbers from 0 to 9, and simple addition of the numbers to make sequences where the third number must be the sum of the previous two. For example, this sequence would be playable: 8314594. 8+3=1, 3+1=4, 1+4=5, 4+5=9, 5+9=4. This is how ‘words’ are formed in Yushino. It’s a new way to play the word game, but it’s still familiar. But it’s also fair.

2. No “qi” cheating here!

Look, using the word “qi” in Scrabble isn’t “cheating” per se, but look, you never use that word in conversation, ever. Or any of those stupid Scrabble words, ever. There’s none of that weak sauce in Yushino. Everyone can do basic math. Hopefully. If you can’t, then you should totally play me.

3. It’s cross-platform

Yes, the game is launching on Android, but it’s a beta form. It doesn’t run in full-screen on the Nexus 7 quite yet, for example. But if the game sounds interesting, then it’s possible to play via Facebook too, or via iOS as well. Yes, I’m suggesting blasphemy, but it’s true! While the game’s being figured out on Android, there’s still plenty of ways to enjoy it.

4. Nothing cooler than playing a game in beta, right?

Hey, why not play a game that’s not quite finished? Why not help figure out what’s going on with a game and make it into a fully-formed, and finished product? That’s just cool. Plus, you can totally be a hipster and say you were there first.

5. You can play me (and probably lose)

Take on username wondroushippo and prepare for a beatdown. I’m not too bad at the game considering I’ve beaten the one of the creators of the game multiple times! Good luck.

Word games of any kind are challenging. W.E.L.D.E.R. is not like most word games out there. It’s almost a combination of a Scrabble and a puzzle game like Bejeweled. In this case, it’s a matter of spelling words vs. matching colors.

W.E.L.D.E.R. has features one would expect and some other add-ins to make it a little more unique and fun. When the game begins, a board full of Scrabble-like tiles with letters and blank spaces are shown. With a limited number of swaps, the goal is to change around letters to form four or more letter words. Like in many word games, proper nouns like city or names cannot be used. The blank letters are able to be changed into any of the letters of the alphabet. However, once they’re changed the block cannot be changed again or go back to being blank.

After so many words are completed, more swaps are given. ne of the other unique features of the game is the apocalypse swap. What this does is wipes out the entire board and replaces it with all new tiles. Many times when using the apocalypse swap several words are created; almost like freebies. Other types of squares make it more of a challenge also. For example the hot squares cannot be moved without using a wrench. The wrench tool is not accessible right away. Different types of swaps are available as the game progresses. There is a swap that allows a section of the word to be selected and that whole section moved vs. using several individual swaps to move all the letters.

W.E.L.D.E.R. is meant to be a social game. Play against others by either signing in with a Facebook account or creating an account. Playing against others makes the game a little more competitive and brings a whole new aspect to word games like this.

Wordfeud is a Scrabble clone that allows players to challenge friends remotely across Android, iOS and Windows Phone devices.

For Scrabble familiars, the basics are unchanged. I had to use a combination of skill and vocabulary to score points on a board of squares of differing values. The game showed gave me and my opponent seven randomly selected letter tiles, mimicking the real life board game, the kicker being that all words created horizontally and vertically had to be”true” words. Every time I took a turn, my used tiles were replenished back to seven. On each of my turns, I could attempt a word, shuffle my tiles, or swap all or some tiles for new random ones (as long as there were more than 7 left in the bag). If a word was bogus (meaning: not in the engine’s dictionary), it would not let me play it.

A couple of the changes from the canon are what will probably raise the stakes for some; for example, there are two type of game boards that I could pick at the beginning. I could pick the normal board, which was the perfectly symmetrical board most Scrabble players are used to; on this board, you had the double and triple letter/word squares cleanly equidistant from each other. There was also the randomized board, which threw the special squares all over the place. After a turn, my opponent had 72 hours to play, or I won by default and vice versa. Three passed turns in any order allowed the person with the highest score after deductions to win.

My biggest complaint was the absence of the challenge function. I loved that this game did not try to mimic Scrabble’s convoluted dictionary, but I would have loved an optional challenge button. I also think that while the clean interface is a huge draw, the game could have done with an occasional graphic differentiation like when, say, I used all seven tiles. A re-settable stat counter would have been nice too, as would optional skins.

Wordfeud is a great cross-platform Scrabble clone that also has the advantage of having multi-language support. The easy nature of play, coupled with liberal turn time and ability to play multiple games simultaneously should endear it to plenty of people. It’s clean interface separates it from competitors.

For those who are good with words and word games – and don’t want to compete with a machine – RumbleÂ is a good option from the many games in its category. Although it has a “practice” level to play without a human opponent, the main modes of this game allow for playing with Facebook friends or with a random online player who’s ready to play. The game does require an internet connection for this, so that’s something to consider if connectivity is an issue.

It took a while for me to understand the basics of Rumble, but ultimately, the player just needs to find as many words as they can in a set of letters tiled together. Just like Scrabble, some letters are worth more points than others. The game has three modes: play with a specific friend (which requires one should know his Rumble user name), play with Facebook friends, find a random opponent and the Premium feature, Practice Mode.

In order to beat the opponent, one has to form words within two minutes and get the higher score. Swiping in any direction is allowed, as long as the tiles are adjacent to each other. Each match lasts three rounds. One does not have to win all three rounds, as the winner is determined by the total scores from all three rounds. After a few rounds, I realized that these random enemies know their words, and winning is not as easy as I thought. This is great because it means this game is really played by word-forming fanatics.

Some players may take a while to respond, but one can simply hit theÂ Back button and start another game. The previous one will continue to run in the background. To completely quit from an ongoing match, one can tap on theÂ Resign button.

Other than unresponsiveness due to a slow internet connection, the game runs fairly well. Graphics are also nice and crisp – with letters big enough to swipe through. However, I was not able to find a way to pause a game. There are no buttons to press anywhere and tapping on theÂ Menu key didn’t do anything.

On top of single player mode, the paid version offers an ad-free UI and game statistics. The game can also be played in nine other languages including French, Spanish and German.

A consistent issue with the game (including my own experience) is that the notifications don’t work. In the game settings, there are options to enable notifications, but I never once saw it work. Hopefully this is something that gets fixed with future updates, as it is a bit tedious to open the game again just to check the progress of the matches.

Caveats aside, RumbleÂ can be a great contender to the more popular Scramble With Friends despite the fact that they are a little too similar, with the rules Â exactly the same – down to the two-minute timer. However, word game enthusiasts might not mind an alternative, as long as the experience is just as good. It does need a bit of fine-tuning, but regardless of its quirks,Â Rumble still remains a vibrant, mind-teaser for word addicts.

EA has announced recently that they are launching a service called “Origin,” named after a defunct developer that they used to own. The facets of this service are slowly being revealed, as EA has announced that they will sell PC games through the service; now they have revealed that it will also serve as a social gaming service for EA games. This feature will be coming to not just PC, but it will also hit Android along with iOS.

Most exciting for Android users is the news that Scrabble will be releasing for Android this week with Origin support. As well, it will come with cross-platform multiplayer support between iPhone/iPod touch, iPad, and Facebook versions of the game. It will be a free download on Android, as well. Shift 2, a spinoff of the Need for Speed series, will support Origin as well when it launches soon on iOS, and will offer in-game rewards for players who use Origin. There’s no word if the game will launch on Android as well, though the first Shift game was released on Android, so it could be reasonably expected that at some point the game will be seen on Android as well.

The benefits of another social gaming service on iOS are seemingly limited because of Game Center providing similar friends/leaderboards/achievements/matchmaking functionality, and EA games do not use Game Center on iOS at all. On Android these social gaming features are all provided As well, the crossplatform benefits are quite obvious, especially if this is something where users could conceivably play their games wherever they want to, whenever they want to. Hypothetically, someone could play their Scrabble games on their Android phone while on the go, on their computer while they work, and on their iPad when sitting on their couch. Game saves will seemingly work in the same way, and hopefully this should also lead to shared achievements, and the ability to compete against players on other platforms on leaderboards.

One of iOS’s biggest games has been Words With Friends. The Scrabble-inspired word game, developed by Newtoy, has been successful enough that it has been a perennial top selling app on the iPhone App Store, including reaching back up to #5 this past week as the Verizon iPhone 4 released. Newtoy has become successful enough because of the game to have collaborated with major mobile publisher ngmoco:) on social farming game We Rule (which has become a lucrative franchise for ngmoco:) on iOS), and this past year, Newtoy was acquired by social gaming giant Zynga, of Farmville fame. A big impetus for this acquisition is to get Words With Friends outside of the confines of iOS, as Words With Friends is now available on Android.

The scrabble-esque phenomenon known as “Words With Friends” may be heading over to Android very soon. “Words With Friends” has been the premier scrabble game on iOS since its inception and almost every iOS user I know plays this game on a daily basis. I was always a little jealous and thus searched for a similar game for my Android device. I have since been rocking “WordWise Pro” and have been happy with it for the most part. Wordfeud for Android is another very popular alternative and has seen much success with Android users. While these are both great games, they aren’t “Words With Friends.”

WordWise for Android is a casual two player word game resembling that grand daddy of word games known as Scrabble. Mobile multiplayer turn-based word games have been growing in popularity ever since the smash hit “Words With Friends” was released on Apple’s iOS platform. Words With Friends has yet to port over to Android but that hasn’t stopped developers from riding the gravy train.

While each of the games from this genre offer their own experience, WordWise has managed to do what its competitors have failed to do: offer cross platform play. This recent breakthrough is bound to spark curiosity and so, without further ado, I present WordWise.